Case Study: What is the Best Time to Post on Instagram?

You have a perfect picture, catchy text, and the whole team ready for incoming likes and comments. The only remaining question is when to publish the post to achieve the best results? 

Many asked the same question before you, so did we. In cooperation with full-service digital marketing agency Fragile, we prepared an analysis of all their client's data to discover the answer – what day and time bring the highest number of interactions? 

Why Time Matters? 

The online competition is huge, and everybody fights for a bit of viewers' attention. To get your space, it's good to follow social media user's behavior. Finding the right time to publish is one of the promising strategies for "selling" your content better. 

From time to time, you run across a new study that shows you the perfect timing on Instagram. The only problem here is that each of the studies has (slightly) different results. And it makes perfect sense since each profile is different. The safest way to find out the best results is to do your own analysis (and it's super easy; later, we'll show you how). 

The data from a full-service digital marketing agency with a wide range of different clients can be your first step to realize which times and days look promising or which are bold to try! 

What Are Older Studies Saying? 

Before we get to the data you are looking for, keep in mind that those guides don't advise you to post only once per week on an exact day and the only time. But those times signify better engagement, i.e., the activity of users. 

• HubSpot - between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. – Thursday the best day
• Sprout Social - Wednesday at 11 a.m. and Friday at 10–11 a.m.
• Expert Voice - Wednesday: 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. (doesn't specify time zone)
• Later – 9 a.m.-11 a.m. EST

The Data from Fragile Media 

And here comes the marketing agency analysis of the best time to post on Instagram. We went through all Instagram accounts they manage, averaged the interactions per day and per hour, and compared them. (The data are from 3 months, August – October 2020)

And we found out? In general, the results say the best time to post to gain the most interactions is Tuesday at 4 p.m. But as you can see in the graphs below, the data are quite close. 

According to our analysis, Tuesday and Thursday are strong days, being quite a lot ahead of the others. But we believe it's important to remember that some of the managed profiles didn't publish on weekdays, which brings some disadvantages to weekends. That's why we made one more graph for weekdays, counting only those profiles who posted at least once on each day, including weekends. 

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Marketing Agency Insight

As we wanted to put the collected data in further context, we asked about the agency's timing on social media. Nikola Jirousková, the social media team leader in Fragile agency, has a clear answer. "Both Instagram and ZoomSphere provide statistics showing when the fans are online. That's the key for use. We follow those data, and according to the graphs, we plan content for next weeks or months."

Focus on one, two days? No…

As we like to remind ourselves, there are no shortcuts in marketing. Saying that the one and only day or time will bring you thousands of new followers is not right, as Nikola confirms. "According to our data, we choose the best days and times, but in general, we try to spread the content into the whole week. For example, we don't want to publish only on Monday, because it's the best day, and then we would have the rest of the week so-called 'dead'. That would make things worse than better."

And what about the weekends?

The weekends are a tricky part for those who run a business profile. "On weekends, we publish less than through weekdays. The reason is simple – the community management is not 100 %. We don't want users to feel neglected or ignored. So it's better to publish when we are ready to react back immediately," explains Nikola why it's not always best to post on weekends. 

The Sum Up

The right timing might be essential – whether it's understanding your fan's behavior or respecting your team's capabilities. All of that mentioned should be a part of your strong social media strategy. Combine your experience, Instagram data, and ZoomSphere features to gain the best results. 

Lastly, as Nikola pointed out for us, even those "best" days and times change throughout the year. It's essential to watch the trend and, from time to time, try a completely different strategy, walk out of your routine, and see the effect. Not only in the matter of Instagram😎